MAYOR BEATS HIS BUDGET DEADLINE

James StrongCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Mayor Harold Washington beat the legal deadline Friday for filing the 386 pages of his $2.1 billion city budget for 1986, which includes $50 million more in property-tax levies than the previous budget.

Despite earlier promises of ''reform,'' Washington reverted to practices of past mayors by delaying revelation of the full budget for a month, obviating some of the attacks that more knowledge of his spending programs might have provoked.

The administration disclosed its preliminary budget Oct. 17, but without an item-by-item breakdown.

In previous years, Washington has submitted his full budget by Oct. 15, but embarrassing attacks on his preliminary spending plans altered this year`s procedures. He waited until Friday to present the document to City Clerk Walter Kozubowski and to the 50 aldermen and the press.

A statement from Washington`s office said that the aldermen ''have had one full month to study the programs and initiatives we have proposed. We expect they will take a close look . . . and that the city will have a sound and reasonable budget long before January 1 and without unnecessary crises.'' The new budget includes $15.1 million for public safety and neighborhood development; $5.6 million to hire 500 new police officers, raising the total authorization to 12,500; $11.7 million for maternal and child care; $5.1 million for emergency food and shelter programs, and $1.1 million program to clean and maintain 4,100 vacant lots.

Cursory examination of the inch-thick document failed to produce any surprises, but staffs for majority-bloc aldermen began scrutinizing it line by line for embarrassing proposals similar to those found last year.

They included a kitchen in the mayor`s office, showers for the head of the Department of Streets and Sanitation and a fleet of automobiles and chauffeurs for department heads.

Ald. Edward Burke (14th), finance committee chairman, is scheduled to open hearings Thursday to scrutinize the document. Aldermen have until midnight Dec. 31 to approve a budget.

Washington has proposed freezing the tax rate and hopes to gain $50 million in property taxes through upcoming property reassessments and levies on new commercial developments to cover a 3.3 percent increase in the city`s general-fund budget.

Revenue projections for 1986 will rely on scheduled reassessment of two Cook County real-estate quadrants: the northwest this year and the southwest in 1986.

In exchange, the administration proposes reducing the head tax that employers must pay on their employees, from $5 a year to $4.

''The real fight will shape up over tax revenues,'' said a source close to the finance committee chairman. ''Burke and the majority bloc have vowed that there will be no increases in Chicago`s property taxes.''

But Washington, in the statement from his office, said the budget proposal ''does not raise a single tax rate or fee of any kind. And it begins to return a fair share of property tax to Chicago.''

Funds for anticipated pay increases for the city`s more than 38,000 workers were not included in the budget. Some estimates say that wage raises for police, firefighters, building tradesmen and white-collar workers would cost up to $60 million more than what is in the budget.

Despite reported threats to eliminate the position of harbormaster held by state Sen. Glenn Dawson (D., Chicago)--a political ally of Edward Vrdolyak from Vrdolyak`s 18th Senate District--he will keep the job, Washington`s budget says, and be paid $47,508.

A budget proposed for the city`s Department of Public Works earlier this month tentatively called for firing Dawson, a move that could have touched off another round of squabbling between the mayor`s 21 city council supporters and the 29 aldermen aligned with Vrdolyak.

Paul Karas, public works commissioner, is investigating whether Dawson received his regular city salary while working four days in Springfield this year as a state senator, and the FBI and the Cook County state`s attorney`s office is investigating Dawson`s private maritime activities.